It proved
far easier to find the rhetoric to excite public fears
over lawlessness than the controls for reducing crime
and disorder. During the 1968 campaign Nixon had persistently
attacked the "permissiveness" of the Democratic
attorney general, Ramsey Clark, and pledged that the
first step in his war on crime would be to replace him
with a more determined and tougher chief law officer.
"Ramsey Clark had been symbolic of the laissez-faire
liberal approach to crime control," Egil Krogh,
then deputy assistant to the president for law enforcement
recalled. "The promise of a new attorney general
was all part of the same idea that crime had gotten
so much out of control that he was going to take stringent
measures." Nixon chose as a replacement for Ramsey
Clark his law partner and campaign manager, John Newton
Mitchell. Like Nixon, Mitchell was indeed a determined
man: he worked his way through college and played semipro
ice hockey, one of the more violent sports available.
In World War II he sought the most dangerous service
available in the Navy, and was a commander of the PT
boat squadron in which John F. Kennedy served as a lieutenant.
As one of the leading municipal-bond lawyers in New
York City, he dealt constantly with local politicians
across the country interested in gaining a favorable
opinion for a tax-free bond issue. He joined Nixon's
law firm as a senior partner in 1967 and made an immediate
impression on Nixon. Little more than a year later,
he agreed to be the campaign manager for Nixon's presidential
effort, and seemed to many in the campaign to be the
only person to whom Nixon deferred. Mitchell, a self-made
man who enjoyed his wealth, wanted to return to his
law practice, but reluctantly agreed to serve his new
friend as attorney general.

In January, 1969, only a few
days after he had assumed office, President Nixon convened
a meeting in the White House on possible law-and-order
initiatives. The small inner circle of advisors who
attended that meeting included John Mitchell, who in
those early days acted as a "prime minister"
to the president; John Ehrlichman, a Seattle land-use
lawyer who had served as tour director in the 1968 campaign
and was now counsel to the president; Egil Krogh, the
young deputy to Ehrlichman; Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
a former advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson who
was then the counsel for domestic affairs, and Donald
Santarelli, a twenty-nine-year-old lawyer who had drafted
many of the position papers on crime for the 1968 Nixon
campaign, and who was in the process of joining the
Justice Department as a strategist for the crime-control
program.

The meeting began with President
Nixon's defining law and order as his "principal
domestic issue." In the extensive interviews that
Egil Krogh had with me over a two-month period in 1974
he recalled that in that January meeting the president
used general terminology such as "we are a tough,
law-and-order administration, and we are going to crack
down on crime." Since the rhetoric used during
the campaign in 1968 was basically "get tough,"
Krogh explained, "there was a clear motivation
to be able to deliver to the electorate In 1972 a record
of improvement in crime control." Nixon stated
that the two categories of crime that would be most
useful to diminish were armed robbery and burglary,
since they "instill the greatest fear" in
the electorate. As Nixon continued to describe his objectives
for crime control, John Mitchell began slowly shaking
his head in a negative manner, and pulling on his pipe
as if it were some sort of semaphore signal. Asked whether
he thought there was any problem, Mitchell leaned back
and explained that most of the crimes that the president
was interested in controlling did not fall under the
jurisdiction or powers of the federal government. Except
for Washington, D.C.. where the federal government did
have direct Jurisdiction, crimes such as homicide, assault,
mugging, robbery, and burglary were not violations of
federal law but of state or local law, and even the
federal government found an indirect way of intervening
in the problem, the local government would get the credit
for diminishing those classes of crimes. Moreover, John
Ehrlichman pointed out, the established agencies of
the federal government, such as the FBI, the IRS, the
Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), and
the Treasury Department, had traditionally been reluctant
to involve themselves in any sort of offensive against
such local crimes. In all, there were only a few thousand
federal agents (not including the CIA or the Department
of Defense) and they could not realistically be expected
to have much effect on street crimes in the urban centers
of America. Such crimes were committed, according to
the best police estimates, by teenage youth acting on
spur-of-the-moment inspirations or on targets of opportunity.
Nixon quickly comprehended, Krogh said, that "the
reach of the federal government's power in law enforcement
did not penetrate to the state or local level ... where
most of the street crime people were afraid of existed."
Donald Santarelli was called upon to sum up the situation.
He later recounted, in an interview with me:

In the light of many promises
made in the 1968 campaign, and the unerring belief
that the Nixon administration had to do something
dramatic in the area of law enforcement, it was
necessary for me to put the actual ability of the
federal government in perspective for the president
and top advisors....

I told them that the federal
government simply did not have the machinery or
authority to deal with crime in America outside
the District of Columbia.... The only thing we could
do was to exercise vigorous symbolic leadership....
With the president and attorney general as spokesmen,
we could elevate the issue of crime to the level
of the president.

The new strategy thus emerged.
Ehrlichman suggested to Krogh that since "there
were clear limits on what the federal government could
do," the alternative was to "jawbone ... to
stimulate action at the state and local level simply
by making the issue [verbally]." Though the administration
lacked the "tools" actually to reduce crime,
it could wage a symbolic war on crime. In 1974 Krogh
explained to me that during the first year of Nixon's
administration, a whole range of "symbolic strategies"
were discussed. Harsh-sounding legislation could be
proposed to Congress which would have little effect
on law enforcement but would greatly enhance the administration's
public reputation for toughness (and if Congress failed
to enact these laws, it could be blamed for "softness"
toward crime). Repressive-sounding words such as "preventive
detention" could be bandied about by administration
officials, thus provoking an outcry in the "liberal
press" which would add to the appearance of the
relentless war on crime by the administration. A presidential
spokesman could also directly attack judges in the courts
for being sympathetic to criminals in order to make
the administration seem, by contrast, hardline. The
Nixon strategists thus decided early on that though
they could not directly reduce street crime in America,
they could gain enormous publicity for their crime offensive
by calling attention to their repressive-sounding plans
and ideas for law enforcement, and thereby create a
bete noire for the liberal press to focus on.

Since President Nixon was by
1969 cultivating a new image for himself as a reasonable
and moderate man (and allowing Vice President Agnew
to make the more provocative speeches), John Mitchell
was chosen for the role of Mr. Law and Order. Krogh
later explained, "The president felt that Mitchell
would represent the law and-order image that had been
developed" by the "speech-writing staff"
and would effectively use their "language of crime
control" to stir public reactions. Mitchell's public
role was to identify himself with a remorseless, hard-line
attitude toward crime and criminals. In both public
appearances and private briefings for the press he was
to stress the urgent need for isolating criminals from
the rest of society through strict application of the
laws and long prison sentences. When, for example, H.
R. Haldeman, the president's chief of staff, was planning
a presidential briefing on drugs for television writers
in April, 1970, he decided on a strategy whereby the
president would "tie in the attorney general in
such a way as to position him in the minds of TV writers
and producers as the spearhead of the anti-drug movement
within the administration," according to a White
House memorandum. John Mitchell's criticism of the supposed
laxity of criminal judges was also "part of the
speech rhetoric land] part of the political needs at
the time," according to Krogh's later explanation
to me of the 1969 strategy. As for the "political
law-and-order bills" that Mitchell exhorted Congress
to pass, Krogh then explained, "It was my view
that while these bills would suggest a tough law-and-order
demeanor by the administration, the legislation itself
did not provide an enhanced ability to the police department
or to the courts to reduce crime as such. The no-knock
legislation struck me, and also Mr. Ehrlichman, as almost
inherently repressive in tone." Indeed, Jerry Wolfson,
then police chief of Washington, D.C., specifically
told Ehrlichman and Krogh that the no-knock legislation
was unnecessary since the police had "adequate
authority to enter a dwelling" where there was
a probable cause, and the police chief viewed the no-knock
bill as "law-and-order window dressing rather than
as initiatives that would strike at the core of the
problem." Such technical advice was disregarded,
however, since the act of proposing draconian-sounding
law-and-order bills was intended to serve "a political
purpose," as Krogh put it, "rather than really
being directed at curbing the real problem." Thus,
tough-sounding law-and-order bills were proposed. An
internal memorandum in the files of President Nixon's
Domestic Council (circa July, 1970), entitled "Crime
Control and Law Enforcement, Current Status-Political
Position for the 1970 Election," commented, "The
administration's position in the crime field depends
on our ability to shift blame for crime bill inaction
to Congress." To their surprise, however, the Democratic-controlled
Congress rapidly passed even the most repressive-sounding
crime bills by lopsided margins (since not even Democratic
congressmen wanted to appear to their constituents as
voting against a law-and-order bill).

To be sure, the private views
and unpublicized actions of the attorney general did
not always fit the public image being projected - Mr.
Law and Order. For example, during one cabinet meeting
that Krogh recalled, Mitchell strongly objected to President
Nixon's demand for mandatory rather than flexible sentences
for drug offenders. Even though the President replied,
"That's my position, and I cannot have it look
as if I am weak or receding from a hard-line position,"
Mitchell argued that the mandatory sentences would be
"irrational" and "counterproductive."
Ultimately, the president adopted Mitchell's more moderate
view (although Mitchell's position was not made public).
Although Mitchell asked the more sophisticated public
to watch "the deeds, not the words" of the
administration, the bete-noire strategy frightened and
provoked the more liberal audience. Numerous political
commentators in the press interpreted Mitchell's bombast
quite literally as a call for a national police crackdown.
Such negative publicity was intentionally not repudiated
by the White House or the attorney general, since there
existed in fact a curious coincidence of interests between
the Nixon strategists, who wanted to depict a hard-line
attorney general, and their political opponents, who
wanted to depict a repressive attorney general.

Journalistic attacks, such
as Richard Harris's book Justice, which emphasized the
dramatic differences between Attorneys General Ramsey
Clark and John Mitchell in their administration of justice,
played willy-nilly into the bete-noire strategy by heightening
the repressive image of the new attorney general.

This convergence of political
imagery strongly reinforced the notion that the country
was entering a period of political repression-much to
the chagrin of some members of the Nixon administration.
For example, Krogh's young staff assistant Jeffrey Donfeld
complained to Attorney General Mitchell in 1970 that
some of his statements were being misinterpreted by
the public as calls for political repression, and suggested
that the administration's rhetoric on law enforcement
could be toned down so as to avoid any confusion. By
the time that Donfeld walked back from the Department
of Justice to the White House, word had reached his
superior, Egil Krogh, who summoned him to his office
and explained good-naturedly, "Fool ... don't you
think those guys know what they're saying! Don't you
think it is all calculated for a specific purpose?"
At that moment Donfeld realized that "they weren't
trying to correct the charge of repression ... it was
all a matter of perspective and from their perspective,
a tough image was exactly what they wanted." Daniel
Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat with a liberal constituency,
was unwilling to be part of a bete-noire strategy and
fought for nearly six months to have the Justice Department
respond to the charges being made in the press that
the administration was committing genocide or otherwise
attempting to murder the leaders of the Black Panther
party in the United States. Though the charges were
demonstrably false in a number of cases-most of the
alleged shooting incidents occurred before Nixon assumed
office (and while John Mitchell was still a bond lawyer)-the
image-makers in the Department of Justice were not completely
adverse to publicity that identified the attorney general
as someone who was battling black militants, and Moynihan's
protests fell on deaf ears.

Though the bete-noire campaign
achieved success in some quarters-notably, the media-in
identifying John Mitchell and the Nixon administration
with the image of a hard-line, law-and-order offensive,
it failed to impress the public at large. The Domestic
Council crime control memorandum quoted earlier began
by noting, "According to the polls, the public
is not yet persuaded that the administration has succeeded
with the anti-crime drive." Moreover, crime statistics,
which the memorandum termed "the major indicator
for success or failure," showed a large increase
in all the categories of street crime against which
Nixon had pledged an offensive, and newspapers, especially
the Washington Post, were now citing this failure with
great concern, and sometimes with hidden glee. The administration's
record of prosecutions and convictions also turned out,
upon evaluation, to be much less drastic than its rhetoric-prosecution
of federal drug cases actually dropped by almost 10
percent between fiscal 1969 and 1970. Even in the District
of Columbia, where the administration had direct influence
over the policies of the police department, crime had
increased markedly. As the 1970 mid-term election approached,
the Nixon strategists realized that new and more dramatic
efforts would be necessary. They thus suggested, in
another crime-control memorandum, that the attorney
general develop "certain highly visible efforts
in the crime area" such as "organized crime
crackdowns ... to clearly demonstrate-in the public
mind-totality of the administration commitment."
The Domestic Council memorandum noted that although
"organized crime is being attacked through eleven
strike forces soon to be increased to twenty-one strike
forces . ... this program needs more publicity."
And to that end it asked that Mitchell specifically
consider the "apprehension of top-level hoodlums
involved in organized crime on a regular basis."
The law-enforcement planners in the White House believed
that the continuous arrests of suspects with Italian-American
or "racketeer" names would be reported by
the press as a major crackdown on the Mafia (even if
the suspects were released immediately), according to
Krogh's interpretation of the memorandum. He explained
to me that the White House was concerned with "visibility,"
which was understood by the Nixon White House to mean
simply getting the president's efforts in the headlines,
and the most direct means of achieving such coverage
of the crime issue was simply for the attorney general
to make a series of spectacular arrests.

Mitchell, of course, was aware
that previous administrations had established their
reputations by making a few highly publicized arrests
of men suspected of belonging to the Mafia or other
organized crime groups. In 1962, for example, Attorney
General Robert F. Kennedy dispatched one hundred FBI
agents (and a large number of sympathetic journalists)
to Reading, Pennsylvania, to raid an otherwise quiet
dice game. As Victor Navasky pointed out in his account
of the Justice Department under Kennedy, this proved
to be "a brilliant publicity coup-since it advertised
the new Kennedy anti-crime legislation. . . ."
In such raids Attorney General Kennedy pioneered the
development of strike forces, or groups of federal agents
detached from their normal duties and chains of command.
These strike forces quite commonly made illegal break-ins
(or "surreptitious entries," as they called
them) in order to plant concealed microphones in the
homes of suspected gamblers or racketeers. Even though
such illegally obtained information could not be used
to prosecute criminals, the disclosures were leaked
to magazines and newspapers to keep the campaign in
the headlines. Until 1967, this was the traditional
way of waging war against the Mafia. However, when J.
Edgar Hoover became embroiled in a damaging controversy
after it was revealed in court cases that the FBI had
illegally broken into residences on behalf of the strike
forces, and the new attorney general, Ramsey Clark,
refused to give authorizations for such activities,
the situation changed radically. Even though Mitchell
may well have been willing to authorize the renewal
of such activity, J. Edgar Hoover was understandably
reluctant to again endanger the reputation of his agency.
(Attorney General Kennedy, although he had also authorized
such activity, later publicly denied it, leaving Hoover
out on a precarious limb.) Moreover, in 1970, Mitchell
himself was under a drumfire of attack in the press
and in the courts about the authorization of wiretaps,
and this made disclosure of electronic surveillance
for national-security purposes much riskier-at least
as far as the FBI was concerned. Although Mitchell could
increase the 'number of strike forces, as the memorandum
recommended, they were far less effective instruments
for generating publicity without the potential for disclosing
' embarrassing information from wiretaps and electronic
surveillance.

Suggestion in 1970 of rounding
up Italian-American gamblers and racketeers also presented
a political problem for Mitchell. An Italian antidefamation
league, with such notable sponsors as Frank Sinatra,
was claiming with some justification that the use of
terms like "Mafia," "Mafiosa," and
"Cosa Nostra" was creating the false impression
that Italian-American citizens were behind all organized
crime in America. Since Italian Americans were a group
that the Nixon strategists hoped to appeal to in the
1972 election, Mitchell acceded to these protests by
prohibiting the Department of Justice from using such
epithets to describe organized crime. Under these conditions
there seemed little profit in image-making to be gained
from the traditional Mafia hunt.

As became increasingly clear
from privately commissioned public opinion polls, the
attempts of the Nixon strategists at image manipulation
had by and large failed. Although John Mitchell had
been successfully projected as a repressive attorney
general and bete noire by the liberal community, the
more conservative constituency on which Nixon depended
for reelection was not made fully aware of the war on
crime. Nixon's speech writers blamed the media for suddenly
changing the issue from repression of criminals to "repression
of dissent," as Patrick Buchanan explained to me.
In any case, the Nixon strategists demanded, in their
"Prognosis for the 1972 Election," that the
Nixon administration be in a position by 1972 to claim
that it "has mounted the most massive effort to
control crime in the nation's history." Apparently
they still hoped that "statistical results [would]
come from the District of Columbia, where the administration
has direct control over the number of police and the
comprehensiveness of the drug fight." Nixon himself
demanded "substantive" results, which meant
to Ehrlichman and Krogh that they would have to produce
statistics and numbers on arrests and convictions. Mr.
Law and Order reminded Ehrlichman and Krogh that there
was only one area in which the federal police could
produce such results on demand-and that was narcotics.
The program for narcotics control, which Krogh himself
had quietly developed, now turned out to be the only
alternative for realizing the law-and-order results
which Nixon demanded.